The Seconds

I never really realized how much my husband loved me. I'm not saying I questioned if he loved me because he showed it every day we were together, but I never comprehended just how deeply we were bound. The last minutes of his life were the ones that made me realize exactly how much I was losing.

To understand, I have to describe his death. Ben had metastatic melanoma that started as a mole on his right arm. He had several other tumors crop up over the five years after the initial diagnosis, but the ones that killed him were three tiny tumors on his liver that eventually made him look as distended as a nine-months pregnant woman. The story of his illness and the too coincidental events of his last hospitalization is an amazing tale in itself, but the last night was the stunner.

Because the liver tumors had so distended his stomach, Ben hadn't eaten any food since July. His last meal, appropriately enough, was a chili dog. His love of junk food is definitely in his genes as both my children eat nothing else. For the past month and a half, he'd been kept alive intravenously. When he came home to hospice care, he elected not to continue the nutrition, but to pass from dehydration instead of a more lingering and painful death as the tumors continued to grow and compress his internal organs.

Death from dehydration involves several stages and I have no great desire to elaborate. If you're interested, look it up. Suffice to say, for the last two days, he had been completely gone mentally, speaking occasionally to people who weren't there and muttering incoherently. His eyes were rarely open probably due to their dryness and his hands moved constantly in a gesture that imitated scratching, but actually wasn't, according to the doctor.

The nurse had informed us she didn't think it would be too much longer, and after nine days of watching him slowly disappear, we gathered around his bed to wait. My mother sat beside me and my father beside her. His mom walked in and out of the room and his youngest sister was upstairs trying to get a little sleep. My baby girl, ten days old, was with my aunt upstairs and my 2 1/2-year-old was watching The Lion King in the living room.

I sat beside his bed and held his hand. His other randomly patted across his body and he breathed softly. I looked at him and felt a swelling of love. The waiting was killing me. For two days, he'd not really spoken a complete word, let alone a thought, and sitting beside the shell that he had become was wearing. The Ben I knew had gone several days ago and I longed for peace for us all. I leaned over and kissed his hand, then began to pray under my breath for it to end soon.

At that moment, I saw my final miracle.

Ben opened his eyes and looked at me. He wasn't gazing about the room or randomly blinking, but looking at me. My eyes caught his and he held my gaze as he hadn't in two whole days.

"I love you," he said clearly, and he smiled, completely back to the man I fell in love with.

Everyone in the room froze in shock. I gasped and read in those beautiful eyes the same message that I had seen so many times in so many places over the years. The silent communion of two people who know each other so well share passed between us so quickly. I drew breath to respond, but even that little time was too much. His eyes closed as I breathed in and his breath left him in a great sigh. I replied, but I know he never heard me.

I've been blessed in so many ways in my life. I have family who've supported me, marvelous children who amaze me daily, and friends who laugh and cry with me, but the greatest gift God ever gave me was three seconds of clarity in Ben's eyes and the words, though usually insufficient to fully express the sentiment, that showed me how deeply I was loved.

While I know he still can't hear them, it feels appropriate to say them here: "I love you, too, Ben."

The Titanic

One of my husband's and my favorite ways to pass a weekend was to find a road that looked like it went nowhere and drive it. A couple of times we had significant adventures, and we frequently got lost. Not lost as in, turn-around-and-go-back-the-way-you-came lost, but are-we-still-in-the-state-and-I-don't-think-we-can-get-around-that-tree-a-second-time-if-we-turn-around lost.

On one Sunday trip, we drove for about six hours. We were, of course, the second type of lost and I don't remember very much of the journey that got us that lost. I do remember a vista of a mountain valley spreading as far as I could see when the goat trail we seemed to be on wobbled a bit too close to the break in the trees that revealed the edge of the cliff. I leaned over and saw the top side of an eagle. I only wish I was joking.

At the time, I didn't really recognize my own mortality, being only 20 and stupid in love, so instead of panicking about the drop, I became really, really excited about the eagle. So excited was I, in fact, that I even forgot how low we were on gas. As I bounced and tried to catch another glimpse, Ben clenched the steering wheel and navigated a tight curve. He said nothing to temper my enthusiasm, probably because the babbling was better than the nagging I had been doing moments before when he pointed out the gas needle and the fact that it had been three hours since we'd left a recognizable road to venture into this wilderness.

The road meandered away from the cliff side and trees draped to create a tunnel again. After a couple more minutes, while I replayed the eagle vision in my head, we came around another bend where the sunlight just broke through the trees across a small pond, or a giant puddle depending on your viewpoint, created by a dip in the road and left behind by a rainfall.

The majesty of the place was indescribable. Still on a high from seeing an actual eagle, Ben stopped the truck and we just looked, instinctively holding hands at the majesty that nature had spread before us.

As we looked, I noticed a leaf, perfectly cupped with its stem bent into a perfect curve, floating docilely on the surface of the puddle. Between the tree tunnel, the majesty of the mountain view, and the perfect ray of sunlight highlighting the area, my ever-present romance took over.

In a hushed whisper, I said, "Ben, look! It's a fairy boat!"

And it was. If one drew a leaf so that it resembled a gondola, this leaf is what it would look like. When it drifted into the sunlight, I could almost see the little fairy poling it along. I created a whole scenario in my head in seconds and Ben, knowing my penchant for fantasy, leaned over and gave me the sweetest kiss, looking into my eyes and saying, "I love you."

Then he withdrew his hand from mine and reached to put the truck in gear.

"No!" I protested. "You'll sink the fairy boat!" This event would ruin the picnic they had planned later in my imaginary scenario.

Ben didn't protest or laugh at me; he actually looked pained to have to spoil the perfection of this little scene, but with a glance and a gesture at the gas gauge, he began to pull through.

I don't know why, but this deeply disturbed me. It seemed somehow symbolic of my childhood being run over by the cares of adulthood. Ben tried to reassure me, "I'll go really slow and straddle the leaf," but after we crept through and looked back, the little boat was listing slowly to the side as the very edge of one prong broke the surface tension of the puddle.

I didn't say anything because what could I say? I knew it was just a leaf and just a puddle and I didn't really believe in fairies anymore. But something on my face must have shown the actual devastation that I was feeling.

My wonderful Ben put the truck in park, got out, and walked into the puddle, wetting his shoes, to scoop up my fairy boat, shake out the water, and set it sailing properly again.

When he got back in the car, I simply gave him a simple kiss. I didn't say anything because what could I say? It was no longer just a leaf and just a puddle, but a magical world where true love conquers all.

With him, it truly did.

The Love

Rarely in life, we have moments of crystal clarity when all the stars in the heavens seem to align perfectly, and we know our place within the cosmos to the point that the nagging little doubts of life vanish and contentment fills our souls.

For around 10 years, we lived near Harrisonburg, Virginia and in our fourth year of marriage, I had one such moment sitting at a stoplight across from the mall.

Ben and I had been to our favorite little Mexican restaurant that night, followed by a quick stop at BigLots for the usual odds and ends we didn't really need. We had ambled around the store for a little while, not acting our age in the toy aisle, and just generally enjoying being together.

As we pulled up to the stoplight in the late afternoon, I briefly felt the effects of the earlier Mexican lunch and passed a very small amount of gas, so small that I thought nothing of it. After four years of marriage, who does?

The sunlight slanted golden through the windshield and Ben's blond hair lit with a halo. He cast a glance in my direction and the angle of the sun was perfect to turn his blue eyes into a glowing fire that still blazes in my memory these many years later. I felt the planets align. My moment of clarity centered in this beautiful man, and my heart swelled so full of love that I actually felt a physical pain in my chest. Good God, I loved him! The sensation was so overwhelming that it needed an outlet, but words are such a poor substitute for such purity of emotion.

I looked deeply at him, trying to beam my feelings through my eyes. "You have such beautiful eyes," I began.

He turned those beautiful eyes towards me, fracturing the sunbeam into a million diamond-like sparkles and my heart lurched as I drew breath to tell him I loved him.

"You," he replied with feeling, "have a very stinky butthole." And then he cracked the window.

So passed my moment of completeness with a waft of fresh air and tears mixed in with my semi-hysterical laughter.

"Love is a many-splendored thing," Han Suyin wrote. I wonder if his wife liked Mexican, too?

The Cheeto Story

I have a thing about spit. I absolutely refuse to drink after anyone, ever, or even share a spoon. Occasionally, I will share a straw with my children, but only if I'm truly desperate. I'll bite something off your fork as long as my lips don't close around it. It's not exactly a phobia, but it comes close.

I wasn't born this way. I can even remember sharing licks on a lollipop with my best friend in school. And French kissing is still good, though not my favorite after pizza for some reason. I won't drink after you, though, and no, you can't have a sip from my water bottle even if you hold it over your mouth and pour it in without touching. I don't care how thirsty you are.

Why am I this way? The Cheeto.

I was sixteen and on a date with my honey. We'd been together for about three years at that point and I distinctly remember the stoplight at which we were sitting in Mt. Airy, NC. We were on our way to Daniel's house, and as was usual in those days, pretty close to dead broke. A search of the car's hidey holes and the bottom of my purse had yielded us just enough money for a bottle of Mt. Dew and a snack size bag of Cheetos.

Ben, my fella, was the hungry one and I was downing the Mt. Dew to recaffeinate and enable me to put up with him and his buddies all together. I wasn't in the best of moods and gazed out the window at the graveyard across the street while Ben crinkled the bag as he turned it up for every last drop of cheesy goodness.

"Let me have a sip," he requested, and, without looking away from the graveyard, I passed over the bottle. He chugged down a swallow, and as the light turned green, he quickly downed another gulp. I took the bottle without thought or comment and raised it to my lips as the graveyard whizzed by with a shift of the gears.

The sweet, golden liquid filled my mouth and I lowered the bottle. Then "Crunch!" A whole cheeto, one with not even a tooth scratch on it, had backwashed from Ben's mouth into the Mt. Dew. It took four chews before the gargantuan cheesedoodle was small enough to swallow! I choked it down since spitting it out seemed even worse.

Ben got the rest of the Mt. Dew, and that was the very last time I ever shared a drink with anyone.